Twenty years ago last weekend, I was in Miami running Christmas in April’s Kickoff to Rebuild event. Christmas in April partners with the NFL to rehab houses in the host city each year. (Christmas in April is now called Rebuilding Together, btw, and they’ll be in Atlanta on Saturday working.) The year I did it, it was the hardest job I’ve ever had. It was pretty much five months of non-stop work. By non-stop, I mean, phone calls on Christmas Eve about Coke sponsorship kind of non-stop work. It was the only time I ever heard someone say to me, “Miss America is on the phone for you.”
I knew the work Christmas in April did; I’d been a local volunteer and house captain for several years in DC. But what I saw in Miami was altogether different. These houses were in terrible shape. I could write many stories about that day, but I’m focusing (haha) this one photo.
Pretty unremarkable, right? Twenty years ago, this ceiling fan made me cry. The picture can still move me to tears.
Twenty years ago, I was walking through the house, taking “after” photos, and I saw this ceiling fan. I remembered what I’d seen a few weeks earlier when we’d first met the homeowners and started to outline the work to do. There was a hole in the ceiling that opened up to the outside. Three little girls slept in one bed, and when it rained, they covered up with a piece of plastic. The mom said that yes, it was hot in the room, but if they turned on the fan, they got shocked. The girls thought they’d be electrocuted if they turned it on in the rain. The only other place they might have slept was on the floor in the living room, but the cinderblock walls were painted black for some inexplicable reason, and they didn’t want to sleep in a dark room.
So they slept in the rain, in the heat, hoping for the best.
When I asked them what they wanted for their room, they said they wanted a roof and a fan. They could have said a new bed, or a coat of paint or some new furniture. But all they wanted was literally a roof over their head. (We got them the other stuff, too.)
That afternoon, when I stood there in their doorway and saw that fan, I cried. One of the Sears guys who’d been working in the house, came up behind me and said, “You know it’s just a fan, Kathleen.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said to him. “It’s so much more than that.” I didn’t tell him the whole story, and he walked off, probably nervous about the girl crying over a fan.
I think about that weekend from time to time, and certain things stand out. The Christmas Eve Coke sponsorship, Kathie Lee Gifford’s insistence that she not be recognized in any way and then complaining when her name wasn’t on a chair on stage, some football players who, when I needed some appliances moved down the street to a house, just picked them up and walked up the street with them. Kevin James showing up in a limo and no one knew who Kevin James was, including me.
But it’s the fan moment that brings me back to the purpose of why we were there. If you get the chance to make a difference in someone’s life, you should do it.
*Really, 582 words
